Too Many Books?
Tim Parks writes: ‘In 1742, responding to what he already saw as a deafening chorus of incompetent poets, Alexander Pope spoke of “snows of paper†providing space for the ever more widespread publication of the “uncreating word.†Two and half centuries later, the Internet and the e-book have also given us access to hundreds of thousands of contemporary novels from this very space into which I am writing. Is it possible our experience of literature might be crucially influenced by the mere availability of the materials necessary for its production? If the Internet hadn’t opened up endless oceans of space on which to write, would we take our books more seriously?’
